r house, but she had to be prepared for search-warrants. (_He
puts the picture on the easel._)

LULU. (_Merrily._) Now the poor monster is learning the joys of life
in Hotel Ox-butter by her own experience.

ALVA. Even now I don't understand how events hang together.

LULU. Oh, Geschwitz arranged it all very cleverly. I must admire her
inventiveness. But the cholera must have raged fearfully in Hamburg
this summer; and on that she founded her plan for freeing me. She
took a course in hospital nursing here, and when she had the
necessary documents she journeyed to Hamburg with them and nursed the
cholera patients. At the first opportunity that offered she put on
the underclothes in which a sick woman had just died and which really
ought to have been burnt. The same morning she traveled back here and
came to see me in prison. In my cell, while the wardress was outside,
we, as quick as we could, exchanged underclothes.

ALVA. So that was the reason why the Countess and you fell sick of
the cholera the same day!

LULU. Exactly, that was it! Geschwitz of course was instantly brought
from her house to the contagious ward in the hospital. But with me,
too, they couldn't think of any other place to take me. So there we
lay in one room in the contagious ward behind the hospital, and from
the first day Geschwitz put forth all her art to make our two faces
as like each other as possible. Day before yesterday she was let out
as cured. Just now she came back and said she'd forgotten her watch.
I put on her clothes, she slipped into my prison frock, and then I
came away. (_With pleasure._) Now she's lying over there as the
murderess of Dr. Schoen.

ALVA. So far as outward appearance goes you can still agree with the
picture as much as ever.

LULU. I'm a little peaked in the face, but otherwise I've lost
nothing. Only one gets incredibly nervous in prison.

ALVA. You looked horribly sick when you came in.

LULU. I had to, to get our necks out of the noose.--And you? What
have you done in this year and a half?

ALVA. I've had a succes d'estime in literary circles with a play I
wrote about you.

LULU. Who's your sweetheart now?

ALVA. An actress I've rented a house for in Karl Street.

LULU. Does she love you?

ALVA. How should I know that? I haven't seen the woman for six weeks.

LULU. Can you stand that?

ALVA. You will never understand that. With me there's the closest
alternation between my sensuality and mental